Posts Tagged ‘embedded’

On Monday July 17th, NERP will host Chris Gammell. Chris is an analog electrical engineer and product manager. He may be known to some of you as co-host of The Amp Hour, and as the charter member of Contextual Electronics. CE offers subscription based electronics courses with different levels of project-oriented learning and personal interaction with an instructor. The Amp Hour is a non-scripted off-the-cuff format show that usually airs every Thursday evening US time. It is the worlds largest and most respected electronics oriented radio show. Discussions range from hobbyist electronics to the state of the electronics industry, components, circuit design, and general on and off-topic rants.

At the NERP on Monday, Chris will present a free rendition of the Contextual Electronics course titled Shine On You Crazy KiCad. NERP has talked about the open source electronic design program called KiCAD before, but this presentation is different. It’s designed for simplicity and fast execution to give a quick win for new users who follow along on their own laptops. The course is designed as an end-to-end art-to-part experience using KiCAD. When I say quick, I mean just 20 minutes start to finish to draw an electronic schematic and then translate the schematic into a printed circuit board PCB layout. (It’s possible to spend lots of days working on a complex circuit board design…) After that, the last step in the process will be for everybody who’s following along to pack up their KiCAD PCB layout files and send them off to OSH Park to actually be made into atoms and snail-mailed back to you. Chris’s demo board is a small, but useful add-on for a Raspberry Pi. The PCB is about 1″ square, so the cost at OSH Park is very small.

Even if you don’t plan on actually making the circuit, go ahead and load up a copy of KiCAD http://kicad-pcb.org/download/ so you can at least have a look and ask questions. It’s open source and free. Win, Mac, & Linux. Kicad is a pretty piece of software in my opinion, and I have a few good reasons for preferring it to Eagle (KiCAD’s freemium competitor).

Chris tells me there’s one thing that NERP might be able to help him with. Contextual Electronics is getting a new course for “absolute beginners” in electronics. This would be along the lines of “what do you need to know about electronics before even thinking of a course like CE”. When you first encounter a subject as broad and deep as electronics, it’s very hard to sort out the signal from the noise. You can spend a lot of effort on something that doesn’t matter while at the same time missing some small Rosetta stone or simple concept that’s perhaps in easy reach. After we move past those first trembling steps, we can forget what it was like just building a knowledge framework. To make the best connections with absolute beginners, Chris wants to hear about your conceptual roadblocks or things you wish you’d known from long (or not so long) ago, and how they resolved (or didn’t resolve) themselves. I’m sure he’ll be happy to talk about it at NERP, but consider signing up for CE and visit the Building an absolute beginner course page and add your thoughts.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

13

07 2017

Mosfets – They can be “on” — They can be “off” — They can even be in between! Tonight at NERP, entrepreneur, engineer, and really good teacher Ste Kulov will guide us into the world of mosfets. Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors if you want to impress your friends.

N-Channel MOSFET [wikipedia]

Since mosfets are a wide and deep subject, I asked Ste where he wanted to focus his talk. With great economy of words, he said it better than I could.

“Most of the generic stuff, fairly quickly. A few simple examples I was probably going to cover are: making a logic inverter, a logic controlled load-switch, and reverse battery protection. Simulating in LTspice [circuit CAD], since I can draw that stuff in two seconds and put it on the screen. If you want to do a power MOSFET application, I would need to see the datasheet for it. Also keep in mind that high current stuff is no good for breadboards. If you need a list: 4 vs 3 terminal, body diode, Rds(on), gate drive, switching speed, N-channel, P-channel, CMOS digital logic, CMOS analog switches.”

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

“Replicape is a high end 3D-printer electronics package in the form of
a Cape that can be placed on a BeagleBone Black. This page is about
the Major revision B. It has five high power and low noise stepper
motors with cool running MosFets and it has been designed to fit in
small spaces without active cooling and without the need for physical
access to the board once installed. That means no potentiometers to
trim or switches to flip.”

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One athttp://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
andhttp://pumpingstationone.org/
Doors open at 6:30pm. NERP is free and open to the public. Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source, raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Pumping Station One

27

03 2017

If you’re a maker, hacker or DIY person, you don’t need to understand how a motor works “under the hood” to use it. However, a bit of theory will help you make the best design choices for your thing that runs in circles. At the next NERP, Jerry Morrow will bring us up to speed on motor technology.

People need to make things go ’round. Car wheels, train wheels, drone propellers, compressors and fans in HVAC and refrigeration, hard drives (at least for the moment), reclining seats, robots, power tools, and on and on. Motors are everywhere. The variety of sizes, shapes, and internal structures is bewildering. About the only functional elements that the different types have in common is a moving part and a stationary part joined by a changing magnetic field. Whether or how you can controll the speed, direction, torque, or power consumption depends on the type of motor. Electric motors have been around for about 150 years. Most of the older classes of motor types are still in use, still useful, and still suited to new design.

We are seeing a revolution in motor technology. Software is eating the world, and it’s finding electric motors pretty tasty. The new generation of motors depends on embedded processors to the extent that the software is as much a part of the motor as the shaft. Sophisticated driver algorithms (and in some cases new materials) are making motors smaller, stronger, and more efficient. In addition to making better citizens of existing applications, the improvements open doors to new classes of applications.
Jerry Morrow is, or has been, a bass player, electrical and computer engineering student, home rehabber, sound technician, electro-mechanical actuation software engineer, Japanese student, father, and maker, and member of Pumping Station One, He prefers the command line, VI editor, and makefiles over IDEs, and wont hold it against you if you don’t.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

Doors open at 6:30pm. NERP is free and open to the public. Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source, raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Pumping Station One

Next Monday at NERP we’ll have a double feature. We’ll hear part 2, of Ste and Nicks’s story of adventure in bringing a successful consumer product to market. Part 1 was about technology, and part 2 is about the _business_ side of bootstrapping HD Retrovision (http://hdretrovision.com). Also on Monday, Dave Conroy will tell us about the PiAQ Open Source Indoor Air Quality Sensor for the Raspberry Pi (http://piaq.io).

About HD Retrovision:
Nick and Ste have been friends since 1999 and both share a passion for playing the (now retro) video game systems that they grew up on. Since then they’ve both studied Electrical Engineering at University, and are now business partners in a company called HD Retrovision that is dedicated to improving the modern day experience with retro consoles while making it accessible to as many people as possible. In this presentation, Ste and Nick will walk you through the ups, downs, and lessons learned while taking a college project and turning it into a profitable company. This talk will cover how they took the idea for HD Retrovision’s Genesis and SNES cables out of the lab, got it funded, and eventually mass-produced overseas.

About the PiAQ: As an R&D Engineer for NAR’s Center for REALTOR® Technology & CRT Labs, Dave Conroy investigates emerging technologies, educates NAR members & the public through presentations, webinars, blogs and podcasts, and develops products for use by members. He’s presented to REALTORS® on the national, state and local levels. The PiAQ is an open hardware and software indoor air quality sensor developed by the National Association of REALTORS’ CRT Labs. The goal for this project is to make information about the air people are breathing more accessible.

Doors open at 6:30pm. NERP is free and open to the public. Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source, raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Pumping Station One

Tonight at NERP, Drew Fustini will be sharing highlights from his presentation at Maker Faire New York 2016.

Drew explains How Open Source software and Open Source Hardware intersected in several BeagleBoard based projects done for the Google Summer of Code. “Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers students stipends to write code for open source projects.” These students’ projects demonstrate the synergy of devices and the code that makes them what they are.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

Doors open at 6:30pm. NERP is free and open to the public. Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source, raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Pumping Station One

10

10 2016

Ste Kulov is Lead Design Engineer at HD Retrovision. Ste (known in NBA Jam as STE) was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago and spent most of his childhood with his hands glued to a SNES controller. Like so many life-long nerds, Ste went to school for electrical engineering and became an expert at working with circuits. His passion for working on really cool engineering projects is second only to his obsession with video games. Ste conceived the original idea for HD Retrovision in his engineering design class to solve the world’s most pressing problem: allowing gamers to play their old systems on TV’s that don’t have the right inputs. [NERP Note: HD Retrovision cables are analog circuit devices. The HD Retrovision circuit board is molded into the cable.]

PS:One knows Ste for being a really good teacher. We wish he could find time to do more analog and fpga circuit classes (hint, hint).

A vital aspect of manufacturing is testing and quality control. Someone has to do it, and they need test instruments, test fixtures, custom software, and detailed written test requirements and procedures. Ste had to design a turnkey QC system for use by his contract manufacturer. The HD retrovision circuit itself is all analog, but the QC system is FPGA based. At NERP tonite, Ste will explain how you QC a cable on the other side of the world.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

Doors open at 6:30pm. NERP is free and open to the public. Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source, raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Pumping Station One

12

09 2016

For the 100th NERP Meetup (Yea!), we’ll have the second of a two-part discussion of embedded GUIs on small Linux devices. Qt is much more than a GUI library. Tonight Ron Olson will share some wisdom on the Qt application framework. Ron tells me that Qt promises a lot, and it delivers. Sounds good to me!

Ron says “I figured the main thrust of the talk would be Qt, how it works, its two main parts (C++, QML), and how it works with the BBB as well as a Qt project controlling an Arduino, all with an eye towards demonstrating the QML, and lightly, the C++ connection.”

After graduating from NYU’s film school, Ron took full advantage of his film and theatre background by becoming a software developer. For 24 years, Ron has been one of the developers that companies go to when they want to make their customers lives worse; he helped write the system to show commercials at MTV, worked on cancelled projects at an animation studio that went out of business, pioneered allowing you to lose your retirement savings on the web at Bankers Trust, came up with new ways to target ads to you at DoubleClick, did his part in the financial crisis at Goldman Sachs, and lately has been writing software to help your attorney remember when your trial date is.
Mostly in C++ and Java.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

Elliott Rouse is the Director of the Neurobionics Lab in the Center for Bionic Medicine at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. The vision of his group is to discover the fundamental science that underlies human joint dynamics during locomotion and incorporate these discoveries in novel, effective wearable robotic technologies.

At NERP on Monday, Elliott will show us some fun stuff from his lab including a new generation of his group’s robotic knee. We’ll see that a robotic knee is much more than a motorized linkage, although it is that, too.

quasi-passive pneumatic foot

Abstract: The Neurobionics Lab is interested in understanding neural control of movement from the lens of mechanical descriptions. The intent is to use these discoveries to design and control a new class of assistive technologies. These technologies would be capable of not only replicating the natural biological torques and speeds, but also the underlying stiffness properties. However, since many of the stiffness properties are unknown, the Neurobionics Lab also seeks to supplement this philosophy with the design and control of technologies that cleverly implement or leverage mechanics. The purpose of this talk will be to discuss ongoing research and a few specific technologies that are currently being developed in the group. The presentation will focus on two technologies, the actuation of wearable robots with balloons, and a novel low cost, lightweight robotic knee prosthesis that is powered by drone technology.

Bio: Elliott Rouse is the Director of the Neurobionics Lab in the Center for Bionic Medicine at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, as well as the Departments of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University. The vision of his group is to discover the fundamental science that underlies human joint dynamics during locomotion and incorporate these discoveries in novel, effective wearable robotic technologies. The Neurobionics Lab uses technical tools from mechanical and biomedical engineering applied to the complex challenges of human augmentation, physical medicine, rehabilitation, and neuroscience. Elliott received the BS degree in mechanical engineering from The Ohio State University in 2007, and the MS and PhD degrees in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Subsequently, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Fellow, working with the Biomechatronics Group in the MIT Media Lab until 2014. Elliott and his research have been featured at TED, on the Discovery Channel, CNN, National Public Radio, Wired Magazine UK, Business Insider, and Odyssey Magazine.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

A few days ago, Andrew arranged the donation of a ZBuilder ulTra 3d resin printer to PS:One. Since Andrew has been working on small a table-top 3-d resin printer using the Raspberry Pi and nanoDLP, it seemed natural to try the nanoDLP controller on the big machine.

As far as we know this retrofit is a new use case for the RPi.

I found the build platform motor leads and Andrew connected them to the nanoDLP system. With a bit of fiddling, the platform started to move as expected. Meanwhile Andrew had a good start on getting the projector to run, and before we were really ready, the essential system components seemed to work. (In the pic below, you can see the the Raspberry Pi logo displaying on the build platform.)

It’s already clear that there are lots of details that need addressing, but those problems seem surmountable.

———————-

Andrew Camardella camardea at gmail) is a contract industrial designer and digital fabricator. He works with companies and individuals conceptualizing, creating, and managing new products, taking ideas from sketch to prototype to finished product. He is an expert in the application of 3D processes and technologies to traditional design methods.

NERP is not exclusively Raspberry Pi, the small computer and embedded systems interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago. NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago. Find NERP and Pumping Station:One at

Doors open at 6:30pm.
NERP is free and open to the public.
Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com
Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source,
raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Pumping Station One